


small calamity

by ilgaksu



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Being Walked In On, Gansey Still Doesn't Know About Ronan And Adam, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:25:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14741147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: “Gansey’s being really fucking weird,” Ronan says one late afternoon at Monmouth. He’s pressed up against Adam, chest to back, sticky-nude and mouthing idly at Adam’s shoulder. Is it the freckles thing again? Ronan doesn’t think Adam’s realised, but he has.“It’s Gansey,” Adam mutters, as though justifying it, feeling something sour flip over in his chest.





	small calamity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crumplelush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumplelush/gifts).



It’s been a month since the world ended and began again: Alpha and Omega, the cut of dark cloth binding Adam’s eyes, Gansey coughing up fresh breath on a roadside. Nobody tells you the opposite of being unmade isn’t wholeness, not by default. Adam goes to work, goes to the Barns, goes to Monmouth. Variation on a theme. The strange purr of the car engine under him, almost frightening in how quiet it is; sweat on the palms of his hands; dust. Ronan’s gaze heavy as a devil on his back; Ronan’s footsteps an early warning sign; Ronan’s slow-reaching smile. Gansey isn’t the only one to have been felled by a kiss. September is looming like an exit wound, and Adam is getting closer to being a real boy every single day. 

“Gansey’s being really fucking weird,” Ronan says one late afternoon at Monmouth. He’s pressed up against Adam, chest to back, sticky-nude and mouthing idly at Adam’s shoulder. Is it the freckles thing again? Ronan doesn’t think Adam’s realised, but he has. 

Adam turns his head to look at him or almost does. His neck is sore from craning up under cars for four days running, craning down to concentrate on his work at the factory for four nights going, so it kind of gets stuck halfway, and Adam winces. Ignores the way Ronan’s eyes sharpen on him, on this small admission. Sometimes Ronan’s look is like a knife to whetstone - sharp to the point of fragility - and Adam isn’t sure if Ronan even knows what he’s giving away with it. Adam sits up, staring at the tan lines on his own wrists, somehow a safer bet than meeting Ronan’s black-lit stare too closely.  

“It’s Gansey,” Adam mutters, as though justifying it, feeling something sour flip over in his chest.  

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.” There’s a strange note in Ronan’s voice when he continues, saying, “You notice everything.” It takes Adam a moment to realise it’s pride. 

It’s like this: Gansey is just very Gansey, very much, all of the time. Head in the clouds, nose in a book. He happily goes Ganseying around in everyone else’s business - sometimes stepping his foot in it as easily as Ronan might put his boot through the roof of one of the miniature Henrietta houses - realising he’s overstepped in his enthusiasm, and then reacting like a scalded Golden Retriever. It’s just the way of him. Until recently, that is. He’s gone distant. It’s the look of someone falling backwards, retreating back into the sea of their own mind, someone looking out from the wrong side of a one-way mirror. 

It seems like resurrection sure does a number on you. That’s got to be the only explanation. When Adam says as much, Ronan rolls his eyes at him in turn. 

“Of course it does,” Ronan says. “What else could it fucking be?” 

He raises his wrist to his mouth and bites down on the bracelets there, chewing almost angrily - in a way that is easy to mistake for anger. Adam grew up in a place built from piecemeal: the ricochet of a plate being placed against a countertop, the uptick of irritation in a drawl, the way a cupboard was shut was as good as an ambulance siren. That’s to say, sometimes he sees Ronan and Ronan is seen, because Adam sees his own reflection in Ronan’s eyes - and sees the moment he pressed his own knuckles against plaster, waiting for the monster of who he could become to swallow him up. 

And sometimes, he looks at Gansey, blinking sweet and owlishly behind his glasses, and it’s -

It’s the same damn thing, or close enough. Right now, Ronan scrubs his hands over his eyes and looks at Adam. 

“What are we going to do?” 

_We._ It’s rapidly becoming Adam’s favourite pronoun, and he longs to lean over and lick it out of Ronan’s mouth.

“I’ll think about it,” which is a very Adam way of saying he doesn’t want to talk about this, not at the moment, not with Ronan laid out and appealing. Ronan raises a single eyebrow and Adam feels his skin go hot with it, but he doesn’t turn his face away. 

“‘Course you will,” Ronan says, eyes gone dark and soft, mood shifting like the sky clearing. He leans up to kiss Adam, fingers light on Adam’s jaw, which, all in all, is a very Ronan way of requesting they change the topic. 

When Ronan is like this, Adam can only think of the word  _ reachable.  _ The more turned on Ronan is, the more pliant he gets. Adam would almost teach him for it, but he couldn’t. Sex with Ronan is one of the few times he forgets where he is, even as he becomes painfully aware of where his body ends and Ronan’s begins. He leans down to kiss up Ronan’s throat, slotting their legs together, pushing Ronan further into the mattress with his own weight - 

“Ronan, are you decent?” Gansey says, opening the door at that exact moment. 

There is a solid second of pure silence. It somehow manages to defy the laws of physics and go on forever. Then, Ronan breaks it and saves them all by grabbing the nearest object and flinging it at Gansey.

“Jesus Christ,” Ronan yells, “Fucking hell, Dick, you absolute fucking  _ cock-up artist _ . Would it kill you to fucking knock?”  

It turns out to be a lava lamp. Gansey dodges it with the ease of years of acclimatisation to Ronan, his mouth still dropped open. Somehow, the lamp doesn’t shatter on impact with the doorframe. Small mercies. Adam left his shoes in the - by the bathroom door, maybe? Adam hadn’t really been paying attention.  

“Good heavens, are you -” Gansey looks to Adam, face painted the expression of a Victorian maiden aunt, seconds away from an attack of the vapours. “I did. I did knock. And when nobody answered - but now I see you are - clearly not - clearly preoccupied -” He pauses, clearly mortified, looking over at Adam. “Is this a recent development?” he clearly can’t help but ask, looking at Adam beseechingly, as though at an ally. He seems very focused on looking only at Adam’s face, which is polite enough that Adam really wants to lie, but he hears himself telling the truth instead. 

“Sort of?” He feels Ronan’s eyes on him as well. “A month?”

“Surprise,” Ronan says, venomous, and Adam fantasises - briefly, but very vividly - about shoving him off the bed. He dismisses it. They’re so tangled right now he’s not sure he won’t end up following Ronan, and Gansey has gotten eyeful enough.  

“Right. Ah. Right. So I’ll just -” Gansey gestures helplessly towards the door. 

“Yeah,” Adam says, equally helplessly. Gansey tries to shut the door, but something in the way seems to be blocking it. Adam realises that it’s probably - yeah, that’s his shirt. From earlier. He grimaces.  

“It’s not closing,” Gansey points out extraneously, flustered, trying several times. “I’m just going to -” and then he’s gone. Fled the scene. Departed. Exit stage right, followed by a hellion: Ronan is throwing himself from the bed, all annoyance. 

“Jesus Christ, Dick,” Ronan yells after him, stomping over with the gait of the self-righteous, buck-ass naked, to rescue Adam’s shirt. “Were you raised in a fucking barn?” 

He slams the door shut as punctuation, throws Adam’s shirt over his shoulder, turns back around. 

“Well, shit,” Ronan grouses, hands on hips. “I bet he’s having palpitations.” 

 

*

 

See, here’s the problem: in another life, Adam might have turned to Gansey on the very day after it happened and said  _ Ronan kissed me _ , and though all the thoughts of internal stillness might have welled up, he would have just about kept them behind his teeth. 

(Only, of course, Gansey would have heard anyway. Richard Gansey III is a more astute student, a better translator, of Adam Parrish than Adam ever truly gives him credit for. Adam gets reminded of that occasionally, and being so known is honestly kind of terrible but also kind of this odd golden feeling at the same time.) 

But that’s not what he did here. In this life, Adam Parrish had kept his mouth shut, sewn it up with all his secrets inside. Loose lips sink ships. Ronan kissing him was landing in a strange new country he had never seen. It was finding Atlantis - where other people might only see the ruins of a sunken city, skeletons that once were beautiful, things half-buried in the silt, Adam suddenly saw how blue the ocean was, blown wide with opportunity. 

Gansey had a historian’s soul. Adam hadn’t been sure any of what he’d found with Ronan would hold up under examination. 

By the time they get themselves cleaned up and presentable, Gansey is surrounded by the scaffolding of several new cardboard structures, red-faced, a glass of orange juice half-drunk at his side. 

“I suppose congratulations are in order,” Gansey manages. It’s so very Gansey Adam is torn between smiling and throwing himself out of the nearest window. 

“God,” Ronan tells him, “You have a gift for making things weirder than they need to be. It’s not like I’ve married your precious Parrish.” 

“It’s none of my business, of course,” Gansey continues quietly, “But if you had told me earlier, I would have been very pleased. I understand that you didn’t want to involve me, though.” 

“Colour me apologetic, Dick,” Ronan replies, acid in his voice. “If I’d realised you were angling for an invitation, I would have -” 

Adam steps on Ronan’s foot, none too gently, and cuts across Ronan’s squawk of protest. 

“You’re right,” Adam tells Gansey, “It’s not any of your business, particularly.” He feels Ronan’s attention snap to him, sudden and satisfying, like pulling back a rubber band. “You have a lot of things we share. This is mine.”   

“It’s not exactly a one man show, Parrish,” he hears Ronan say, even as he feels the weight of Ronan’s regard like a brand - the blatant, rising delight in it.

“Yes,” Gansey says crisply. “I noticed that.” A pause. “It takes two to tango, after all.”

Ronan outright groans. Adam briefly closes his eyes. When he opens them, Gansey is looking back at him, one eyebrow quirked, familiar. Adam feels a wash of affection mixed in with everything else. 

“The wrong thing to say?” Gansey guesses. 

“Unnecessary,” Adam corrects him, at the same time Ronan says, “Obviously,  _ Jesus _ .” 

Gansey nods. 

“Is it too much to hope for that you didn’t say anything to Blue?” Adam says, and sees a look of panic light up Ronan’s face. 

“About that,” Gansey begins, delicately. “I wouldn’t check your phone if I was you.” 

“Throw it out,” Ronan orders Adam immediately. “It’s a garbage phone, she’s probably killed it -”

“No.” It’s Gansey’s turn to correct them. Adam barely has time to be offended. “I think I heard your phone, Ronan. In your jacket? It’s in the sink. I don’t know why, I didn’t want to touch anything - the jacket, that is.” 

Ronan looks positively martyred. 

“I’m going to set it on fire,” he announces, and marches forward. Adam catches his arm. 

“Leave it,” Adam tells him, steering Ronan away from the sink. Ronan makes a disgusted noise and snatches for his car keys off the counter. 

“Always a pleasure, Dick,” he sneers, “We can negotiate visiting hours for Adam later, shall we?” and lets himself out. 

“Be safe!” Gansey yells after him, “I know Adam is very responsible, but -”  

“Fuck off, Gansey!” Ronan yells back merrily. They hear the sounds of his boots thumping down the stairs. 

“That was positively toothless,” Gansey sounds impressed. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of any of this -” he adds, gesturing vaguely to Adam, “Before. You’re taming him.”

“Alright,” Adam says, reaching his limit for the day, “Bye, Gansey.”  

“We’re fine, right?” Gansey calls after him, just as Adam’s nearly to the door. Adam pauses and looks back. When he nods, Gansey exhales visibly. For a second, they just smile at each other. This Gansey is healing, Adam thinks, then: this one might be better. 

“You know,” Gansey begins, “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a nature programme like that before.” His smile is too perfect to be innocent. “You might want to be careful. Did you know there are some animals that kill their mates after -” 

Adam slams the door, so loud that he sees Ronan look up from the bottom of the stairs where he’s waiting, surprised. His smile is the slow one, the one that sears across his face, the one that makes Adam feel like Ronan’s eaten the whole sun and now wants to share it. 

Through the door, he begins to hear Gansey laugh. 

“Hell, Parrish,” Ronan murmurs, when Adam reaches him, “That was one way to stake a claim.” 

Adam shrugs and throws his arm around Ronan’s shoulders. 


End file.
